First Time Yeast Washing

Hi Folks,
Loved the Yeast Washing Illustrated Sticky. I stuck to it pretty much word for word, but I have a few questions:

After I put the yeast/trub from my primary into a 64oz jar, I waited about 30mins. It settled a little bit, but it was still really cloudy.

I then filled up a 12oz mason jar, waited 30min and then poured again into another mason jar and refridgerated.

Repeated 3 times.

When I went to bed, they were very cloudy. However when I came home from work today, they settled out a TON. I have a link below to show what they look like today...

www.hardwareohio.com/yeast.jpg

Anyway, as you can see I have 3 distinct layers:
Top of what looks like the beer that I racked
Middle layer of white(yeast?)
Bottom layer of light brown(trub?)

Do I need to continue to decant into another jar, or am I good to go?

If I need to decant again, how can I only isolate the yeast? Is it ok to just get the top and middle layer?

Probably just worrying, but if I do this wrong, I could potentially ruin my next batch.

Thanks for your help!

The layer that is white and on top looks like the yeast. What I would Do and have done is refridgerate the jars overnight or for about 12-24 hours straight. That way you will have a nice yeast cake layer. Then what I would try to do is to pour off some of the left over wort into another jar and then sanitise a turkey baster and try to pull up just the yeast layer and move it to another jar with some wort in it. Hopefully this will get enough yeast off of the trub so you wont have to worry about extra trub. If you wanted to you could even make a small starter with the yeast that you pull up and grow even more yeast. Cool down the starter after a few days and place it in a jar. That way you know you have a clean good to use starter.

I did one last night. I do not have nearly the amount of yeast in the bottom of my jars. I have maybe a quarter of an inch. I am guesing that I do not have enough yeast.

What I like to do is after shaking up the trub,pour off the cloudy layer as that has the lighter yeast where as the heavier trub drops to the bottom. I do that in 3 separate times and wind up with the final product.

How much trub did you have in your carboy in the first place? If you have that much after washing three times I think you had an awful lot in the carboy to begin with. If you strain your wort when transferring from your boiling pot to the fermenter, you won't have nearly as much trub to deal with later on in the brewing process. Good luck.

great, thanks for the insight guys. working on getting a few buddies harvesting as well so we can do some swapping.

On your initial mixture, I'd mix it up and let it settle out for an hour or so and then decant off the top (that should be almost all yeast in suspension and almost no trub). Making that assumption, after you decant, let that settle in your fridge over night and only save what has settled out as that will be the yeast that will be high floculating. Split that jar (if you so desire) and top off with boiled (sterilized in a pressure cooker would be better) and cooled water so that there's almost no head space in the jar.

Should the layer of yeast be thin? I have about a quarter of an inch in the mason jars. I was careful to leave the trub.